Supersonic passenger aircraft were operated profitably and no longer exist.

There’s levels of R&D required for many technologies where the question goes beyond could this be profitable to what are the risk vs reward that this specific project will succeed.

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shakow a day ago | parent | next [-]

> operated profitably

Until the oil shocks, and until “normal” planes became faster.

I happen to know a couple older and very wealthy people, and they say that even though Concorde was a lot of fun when it was a novelty, they now prefer to have a couple more hours flight and enjoy a 777 premium cabin rather than the cramped Concorde interior.

Anyway, the proof is in the pudding: if no one but national carriers ever bought and operated Concorde or Tu-144 at scale, it's not because of some Amish-like sentiment in the flight industry, but simply because that didn't make sense money-wise.

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ben_w a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Supersonic passenger aircraft were operated profitably

Were they? IIRC joint project by British and French national airlines, they expected to sell loads, hardly anyone wanted to buy the planes, the two airlines kept them flying out of government embarassment.

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cyanydeez a day ago | parent [-]

should probably spell it out: _it wasn't allowed to get to supersonic speed_.

Same way we dont _allow_ eugenics.

	▲	ben_w 21 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Over the Atlantic? Nah, the problem was it was very expensive and not a great experience for the people rich enough to afford it. The US company trying to bring supersonic back are not only focussed on the flight speed, but also the entire customer experience.
	▲	fc417fc802 a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Sure, the regulation that guarded against externalizing certain costs might well have been the only thing precluding profitability. Importantly it wasn't some shared cultural value leading to voluntarily leaving money on the table. Rather the regulator imposed it. We are able to effectively regulate things like the operation of massive aircraft, eugenics, the dumping of toxic waste, or the refinement of nuclear material. But there are also plenty of things that we can't effectively regulate for purely practical reasons.

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necovek a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Were they? Did Concorde provide return on investment? When was the break-even expected? Sure, if we look at it as R&D subsidized by governments of UK and France, then yet, it was profitable.

In particular, the problem with it was that it could not get to supersonic speeds over urban areas, which significantly limited routes where it made sense, and the range was not good enough to cover longer distances.

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fc417fc802 a day ago | parent | prev [-]

But after accounting for maintenance & etc were they more profitable than sinking the equivalent amount of money into something else, such as slower aircraft? Notably there are currently efforts to develop new supersonic passenger liners.